Panel Agrees Teachers Need More Training

Improved teacher training is as important as student testing in the battle to improve public education in California, a state task force concluded Monday.

Named last year by state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, the 40-member Professional Development Task Force recommended that the use of uncredentialed teachers be eliminated within five years.

It also urged an increase in teacher salaries and earlier teacher preparation in college to overcome what it viewed as continuing poor student performance, especially in low-income areas.

Introducing the report, Eastin said the heart of “the educational crisis” in California is that “too many children have uncredentialed, not fully qualified teachers. This is particularly true in many inner-city urban and some rural schools.”

Task force leaders said in a news conference they would favor a raise of at least 20% to 25% to bring teacher pay up to the level of accountants to attract more people to teaching.

“California spends about 35% of total education dollars on teacher salaries, a very low percentage compared to other states,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University and co-chairwoman of the task force.

Darling-Hammond and co-chairman Lionel R. Meno, dean of the College of Education at San Diego State University, warned of dire consequences if public education in the state is not further reformed soon.

“California has set reasonable standards for performance of students, but must provide teachers that give them a chance to realize it,” Meno said.

Otherwise, he said, “We could have a court finding that the performance criteria are too stiff and unfair.”

Darling-Hammond said, “If we continue to fill our low-income elementary schools with teachers unqualified to teach, we can anticipate failure.”

The task force report cited New York state, which recently prohibited the assignment of uncredentialed teachers to its lowest-performing schools, as a good example.

But it didn’t go quite as far, saying only that the lowest-performing California schools should immediately be barred from hiring an above-average proportion of teachers without regular credentials.

The educators also questioned California’s predilection for training most newly credentialed teachers in fifth-year graduate programs rather than with five-year “blended” programs that use the undergraduate years to start the training.

Two years ago, California began to move in the direction of more teacher training in the undergraduate years, and the educators said this gives students an early taste of teaching, so they can see whether they like it.

Eastin said that with many teachers in their 50s and 60s now retiring, California soon will need 300,000 new teachers.

But 40% of all new teachers are gone within a year, and many are poorly trained to teach and don’t like it, Darling-Hammond said.

The report also recommends stepping up training of existing teachers, known as professional development time, from three days a year to 13.

Meno said the task force decided that rather than following California’s recent habit of going its own way with reforms, “we should pull together here what has worked in other states.”